On the very day of the establishment of the Shanghai Commune, the Red Army detachments, which had just arrived in various coastal areas, discovered the traces of the warships of the great powers one after another.

“…… British and American gunboats appeared at Wusongkou, Zhuqiao Town was bombarded by Japanese gunboats, and Jinshanwei observed Japanese cruisers...... It could even be a battleship! The broken ships of the Kuomintang Navy were also moving in the direction of Changxing Island and Chongming Island...... Kuomintang armed motorboats have also appeared in Taihu Lake, and they have even fought a battle with the assault boat team left in Suzhou! ”

Looking at the dense circle of small red forks around the map of Shanghai, Wang Qiu couldn't help but scratch his hair and sighed.

“…… It seems that only a week has passed since we bombarded Shanghai with missiles! These guys are coming so fast! ”

“…… In fact, this reaction speed is already slow...... "Professor Yang took a bunch of small national flags from Britain, France, the United States and Japan out of nowhere, and planted them all over the map of China and its surroundings," ...... In this day and age, the military liliang of the imperialist powers has long penetrated deep into the heart of China, and the mere defeat of Shanghai cannot completely cut off their clutches.

In Tianjin and Beijing, for example, there are garrisons of the great powers that have remained since the time when the Eight-Nation Coalition entered Beijing. In the south of Liangguang, not to mention Hong Kong, the British Far Eastern fortress, the French also had a concession of Guangzhou Bay and a garrison fleet in Zhanjiang.

In the Yangtze River basin, Hankou in Hubei Province also had another base for the British Yangtze River Fleet. The Japanese concession in Chongqing, in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, was also resident with one or two Japanese gunboats...... Furthermore. Japan has a large number of warships stationed in Taiwan and Arthur all year round, ready to be dropped on the Chinese battlefield at any time. It was from the Sasebo Naval Base in Nagasaki Prefecture that the troops were sent directly from the time the fleet was anchored to the time it arrived in Shanghai. It only takes two to three days......"

“…… In general, the current China is a tiger and a wolf, and Japan and European and American countries are all thinking of using a knife on the body of the motherland......"

Fang Zhimin also came up and added, "...... Anyway, they beat theirs, we beat ours. There is no need to disrupt our own pace and rhythm for the sake of harassment by a few gunboats - anyway, let the enemy be as strong as the ship and the artillery are. I can't go ashore now! ”

In fact, in the concept of the Red Army, the entire Shanghai coastline was hundreds of kilometers. Except for Wusongkou, which held the mouth of the Huangpu River, there was nothing worth holding on to within the range of naval guns - there were only endless rice fields, fish ponds, and reeds, and occasionally a few small fishing villages, if the gunboats of the great powers were willing to blow up the mud with expensive shells. Naturally, the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army had nothing to accompany.

Unless the enemy ships can break through the coastal defense batteries at Wusongkou. Penetrating deep into the Huangpu River and directly bombarding the bustling urban areas on both sides of the Huangpu River will pose a more deadly threat to the Shanghai Commune. However, with the current absolute advantage of the traverser, if any country's fleet in China is dizzy and dares to forcibly break into the Huangpu River, then it is absolutely appropriate to go and have no return, that is, a 10,000-ton battleship. It's also for nothing.

Of course, the gunboats of the imperialist powers could also organize the landing of sailors - but this would be tantamount to delivering food to the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, which had recently changed its guns.

As for the mobilization of a larger army force. launched an all-out counterattack against the Shanghai Commune...... Note that it takes time for any country to move from a state of casual peace to a tense wartime system. Even with the technology of the 21 st century and the strength of the United States of America, after the outbreak of the "911" plane collision incident, President George W. Bush continued to hesitate until 7 October before launching the first round of military strikes against Afghanistan.

Obviously, given the conditions of the thirties of the twentieth century, the imperialist powers were probably much slower to respond to the sudden incident of the "fall of Shanghai". Even the Japanese, who were closest to China, waited until Tokyo gathered enough accurate information, discussed a result at the highest level, and then issued a base camp order, completed the mobilization of troops, and formulated a combat ...... It will take more than half a month before the troops can really be put on the battlefield in Shanghai, and before that, it is already the limit to be able to engage in some fire reconnaissance to scare people.

Therefore, after receiving warnings from the coastal areas one after another, the only response of the Red Tenth Army Corps was to inform the coastal villages to be vigilant and prevent the villagers from being harmed. At the same time, a batch of radio-controlled torpedoes and rocket artillery were transported to Wusongkou, allowing a regiment of the 19th Red Division stationed there to try to counterattack. As for the Taihu battlefield, General Su Yu had already taken his assault boat squad to compete with the Kuomintang motorboats with high spirits.

At this time in the present period, the focus and primary task of the Shanghai Commune was still to recruit troops and "raise funds to expand the Red Army" in Shanghai -- the so-called "expansion of the Red Army," as the name suggests, was to expand the Red Army's liliang, that is, to recruit new recruits and replenish the fighters for the Red Army units.

As the saying goes, "striking iron requires its own hardness", if the current Red Tenth Army can sit on a division of 200,000 tigers and wolves, why worry about the indestructibility of the powers?

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Shanghai, Zhabei, shantytown

Standing by the murky river, looking up, there are tattered and simple shanties everywhere, forming a landscape that makes people sigh.

Since the end of the Opium War and the opening of Shanghai according to the treaty, with the import of foreign capital and the development of early industry, a large number of poor peasants have come to Shanghai from the surrounding areas to make a living, because their economic income is very low, and they really cannot afford to rent housing in the urban area, so they have to erect many shantytowns of all kinds on wasteland, cemetery roadside, riverside and even open space around the factory, with bamboo, reed mats, wooden planks and iron sheets and other scattered materials.

These shantytowns began on the banks of the Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek, then spread to the open spaces around the factories and along the railroads, and the zuihou grew throughout the city, forming a dense encirclement of the city. In terms of area, the total area of garden houses (foreigners' patents), Western-style apartments, and new-style Shikumen houses accounted for one-third of the total residential area of Shanghai at that time. But less than one-tenth of Shanghainese live! And the remaining more than 90% of Shanghainese live in simple old-style alleys and shantytowns! The so-called slums!

Naturally, these slums are generally poor. There are no municipal facilities such as running water and fire escapes, and the surrounding factories have to discharge a large amount of sewage, forming many silted stinky ditches, so the smell is tangy, mosquitoes, flies, fleas swarm, spreading the plague, and the per capita housing area is less than 2 square meters. Hundreds of families share a tap – a folk song in Shanghai that year once sang: "...... Shanty towns, traps, rain. The water is deep, the feet are stepped on, and the body is ...... half-body", especially in the shantytown of Hongzhen Old Street, and even a large number of simple coffins have been piled up. Rotting bones littered the streets. For the dead live with the living. Hence the name "Yin Yang Street".

-- Beyond that drunken and golden, prosperous, and heavenly, ten-mile ocean field, there is such a dark shijie of deep suffering.

In the dark skies of this dark Shijie, where millions of toiling people live, there always seems to be a layer of gray smoke and dust.

Every morning, when the eastern sky has just brightened a little, and the air around it is still cold, the whistles of the factories in the distance will tremble and let out a rough roar. Urged by the sound of the whistle, the workers living in these humble shanties rushed out of their homes like frightened cockroaches. Although they are still sleep deprived. He looked listless, and his tired muscles and bones had not yet recovered. But he still cried and mourned. Stepping on the muddy streets of disrepair, facing the noisy and dull roar of machines and the hissing of steam leaks, walk towards the tall brick and stone buildings. In the evening, when they are discarded, they will pour out of the birdcage-like factory like waste slag abandoned by the factory, their clothes blackened, their faces black, and their bodies exude the unpleasant and pungent smell of engine oil.

A day passed in the hard labor of the sweatshop; In this way, the machines and the capitalists drained the health and energy of the workers from their bones. The monotonous life is dull and boring, and the tired workers have little energy to turn their brains, and their only pastime is drinking and scolding their mothers, which makes the dull minds more and more numb. When he returned home and quarreled with his wife, he often beat people with his hands, and never spared his fists and feet.

The days passed like this, and time flowed slowly into the distance like a muddy river. Day after day, year after year, no one ever thought of changing this life, as long as they could barely survive...... But with the advent of the global economic crisis and the Great Depression, even such a life gradually became a luxury—more and more factories closed and went bankrupt, thousands of workers lost their jobs in a daze, at most 600,000 to 800,000 people lost their jobs, and more than a dozen suicide bodies were picked up every day on the streets of any shantytown......

-- No jobs, no food, no handouts, no hope, and even being extorted and forced into debt by gangsters...... Refugees from northern Jiangsu, Shandong, Huguang and even northeast China are still pouring into Shanghai, competing with their original residents for less and less work and pay. Everyone felt that life was really sad, but under the suppression of the White Terror, they were powerless to change, so they could only live one day at a time, and survive to survive.

However, since the Red Army entered Shanghai, the dilapidated shantytowns in Zhabei and other places have finally undergone some new changes that I don't know whether they are good or bad.

-- Wherever there are poor people, there is a source of soldiers that the Red Army needs.

The first thing that appeared in the eyes of the shantytown residents was the overwhelming "Kirov airship", accompanied by the soul-stirring "Soviet March", which slowly pressed from afar -- which not only cheered some knowledgeable young people, but also made more ordinary people feel frightened.

Then came to the shantytown, the Red Army propaganda class, these people always carried a bucket of paint wherever they went, wherever they could write, conspicuous places, they would write big slogans, red, white, blue, one by one huge square words are particularly eye-catching.

In order to attract the attention and mobilize the masses to the maximum, the slogans of the Red Army generally read "Abolish all excesses and miscellaneous taxes!" Abolish usurious lending! "Relief for unemployed laborers and suffering people!" "Raise wages and meals to improve the lives of workers, soldiers and clerks!" "Merchants of all sizes, large and small, are free to carry on business in compliance with the Soviet decree and protect the interests of small and medium-sized merchants!" "Oppose profiteers slacking off their businesses and closing the market and raising prices!" And so on.

If it is in an agricultural area that is further away from the city, it will mainly write "fight local tyrants and divide the land!" "Down with the traitors!" Down with imperialism! "The Soviets are the hope of China!" "No rent. Don't pay your debts! and other content that is more in line with the interests of the peasants, and sometimes some rather elaborate leaflets are distributed.

Of course, any method of propaganda faces the problem of how to attract the attention of the public. It's not about standing on the street, playing and singing. The common people will buy it and sit down and listen, but it will take the Red Army to engage in a variety of other ways to attract them in order to be truly effective.

Therefore, just as the Americans did when they carried out color revolutions in the future, the Red Army also adopted the method of inviting the poor to eat for free in the shantytowns of Shanghai -- specifically, finding an open space to put a cauldron on it. Then the canned meat, locally collected vegetables, pickles and refined white rice sent by the traveler were all thrown into it, boiled into a big pot of stewed chowder porridge with oil and water, and invited the people to bring their own dishes and chopsticks to eat.

Although the poor in Shanghai are richer than those in the mountains of Jiangxi. However, due to long-term unemployment, there are still many people who do not have enough to eat. When some poor families who were not afraid of life heard that the Red Army had invited them to dinner, men, women, and children came with dishes and chopsticks. The cooks and propaganda team members served food to the masses and did propaganda work at the same time. And the crowd is also eating with bowls. While listening to their speeches with relish.

“…… You're coming to Shanghai from out of town. Most of the time, because of the disaster in your hometown, coupled with the exorbitant taxes of the warlords, you have completely bankrupted you, and you have to leave your hometown and leave your children to try your luck in this place...... However, not to mention that it is not easy to find a job in Shanghai, even if you are lucky enough to find a job. Right now, the whole Shijie is in an economic crisis, and you can get a maximum of three cents a day on your salary. I got up at dawn and stayed up until it was dark, and I had to do it for twelve to fourteen hours. In case you get sick from exhaustion, you don't have a salary, and you have to pay for your own medical expenses...... The food is all coarse tea and light rice, and there is no fish, meat and meat to eat. You are sweating blood all day long, not only do you not have money to send home to support your family, but you can't even maintain your own life, and there are many people who want to go back, but they can't find it, so you have to endure the pain. Otherwise, I won't even be able to find a ...... to eat."

“…… We, the Red Army, weishenme, want to bring down the capitalists? It's simple! Because they deserve it! You see, the boss doesn't do any work every day, and even the business depends on a few managers, but he can eat and dress well all year round, and he can live in a big house, but what if you don't work? What do you use to feed your family? Even if you work every day, how much money do you earn every month? In case someone in the family gets sick one day, what money do you get to see a doctor? You can only borrow money. Q: Who borrows? I can only ask the boss to borrow! Or usury! ”

“…… As a result, you will be saddled with debts that you will not be able to pay off for the rest of your life, and your children and grandchildren will have to make cattle and horses for the boss......"

“…… Young man, you should join the Red Army, the Red Army has enough to eat. Instead of having a meal at home and not having a meal, and thinking about tomorrow after today, when the Kuomintang and foreigners' armies come, they will have to hide in the east and hide in the west, it is better to go with the Red Army and work together to create a new world where the poor are the masters of the house......"

“…… Sing along with me...... To be a soldier is to be a Red Army, workers and peasants everywhere to welcome, to defeat the local tyrants and divide the land, to plough the land to have a field to cultivate. To be a soldier is to be a Red Army, and workers and peasants everywhere welcome it, and the Red Army is the same from top to bottom, and no one oppresses anyone. To be a soldier is to be a Red Army, workers and peasants everywhere come to welcome, comprador gentry reactionaries, kill him mercilessly! ”

……

After listening to the propaganda of the Red Army, many poor people quietly reported the situation to them on the spot, telling them about the crimes of gangsters, local tyrants, inferior gentry, and capitalists, and some even volunteered to lead the way for them to fight against local tyrants and bullies -- according to the basic policy of the Red Army during the Agrarian Revolutionary War, it was to unconditionally confiscate all the property of the warlords, bureaucrats, landlords, and gentry, but not to let the Red Army eat alone, but to distribute it to the masses as much as possible except for the necessary part of maintaining military supplies, and to call on the masses to confiscate it themselves.

On the one hand, this practice can make the masses the beneficiaries of the Red Army, and on the other hand, because they personally participate in the confiscation of the property of the gentry, they have to be tied up with the Red Army. In any respect, it was very conducive to the effective expansion of the Red Army.

Therefore, after beating the local tyrants and bullies, the Red Army distributed clothes and food to the masses, and only took away precious antiques and silver dollars and gold bars. For a time, it was really a "great joy" -- when they heard that the Red Army had opened warehouses to release grain and distribute the things of a certain capitalist or a big local tyrant, the poor masses in the shantytowns were really overjoyed, so they set out to work, sell cigarettes, shine shoes, men, women, and old and young together, and rushed from every house to house, and immediately crowded the streets with crowds, and those who took clothes took their clothes, and those who carried grain carried grain...... Then he went home grinning.

In this way, under the temptation of practical interests, more people were willing to approach the Red Army, and one after another took the initiative to send information one after another, telling by name which rich man was the worst and how many sins he had committed, thus making the Red Army's goal of fighting local tyrants more accurate -- all those who had been officials, collected rents and food, and had rich and powerful people were all out of bad luck. As for the specific process of this matter, the masses generally put forward a list of people who should be beaten, and after being reviewed and approved by the task force, a notice is posted to make the crime of oppressing the masses public, their property is confiscated and distributed to the poor people, and the prisoners are tried and executed.

-- Having food and clothing, and being able to take revenge was enough to make the poor people cry and be grateful to the Red Army at that time. So, when the Red Army soldiers came to recruit with a small triangular red flag in one hand and a small copper bell in the other, young people rushed to sign up for the army. (To be continued......)